Monday, August 31, 2009

Hello, person.I am performing some comedy this weekend in Philadelphia, please come by and say hello if you're in the area or willing to travel.

It's a 90-minute show in which I'll have a 20 minute set of my own usual cartoons and comedy stuff and another set in which I'll do a thing called "dueling cartoonists" with a friend of mine. The show is part of the Philly Fringe Fest and is all about vegetarianism, but is supposed to be funny and entertaining in spite of that. All I can guarantee is that my two sets will be.

I'll also be available for talking to face-to-face, and will likely be selling some of my trading cards or books or something. Depends what I can find around the house. CHNW will be there, too!

Show: Veggie Cabaret IIDate: Saturday, September 5th, 2009Show time: 8pm, approximately 90 minutes, including intermissionVenue: The Rotunda, 4014 Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19104Tickets: $15, cash/checks at the door. Advanced tickets can be purchased through the Live Arts and Philly Fringe Box Office online at www.livearts-fringe.org starting early August or by calling 215-413-1318 after August 24th.Ticket Special: $20 for first 8 parties of 2-3 that reserve Cabaret-style seating and vegan dinner platter.Contact: Lisa Levinson at lisa@publiceyephilly.org or (215) 620-2130. Visit www.publiceyephilly.org for more info.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

This cartoon was particularly fun to research and draw as I'm a fan of insects in general. I don't like the harmful ones, like mosquitoes, lice, ticks (technically an arachnid), etc., but the rest are always welcome in my presence.

A few years back, CHNW and I spent a couple of months in Costa Rica in a hut in the jungle. Brought my computer and some art supplies and just worked my regular daily schedule there, uploading my work via a very unreliable internet connection (our only electronic convenience). Very large and strange insects used to wander through our living and cooking area daily and we really enjoyed the visits. I quickly learned to get all my computer work done by day, as the glow of the screen at night would attract swarms of flying buzzies. By the time we got back to Brooklyn, my keyboard and screen were both speckled with dead bugs, like a smiling biker's teeth after a road trip.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

This is a cartoon that I submitted recently but which was rejected for content. The term "up yours" was considered a little too racy for most newspaper funny pages, so it didn't get published. It was actually written by J.C. Duffy, of The Fusco Brothers and The New Yorker. He didn't have a market for it, so he offered it to me.

I knew it was "iffy" when I drew it, but I hoped "up yours" was innocuous enough to get by. I guess I should have known better. Lord knows what kind of calamity and social decay would have been wrought upon western civilization if this kind of profanity were to be printed in a comic. The body shudders, the mind reels.

Profanity is profanity purely and only because we all agree that it is. If we stop forbidding certain words or phrases, they immediately lose their power. These kinds of words have the magical power to offend simple because we endow them with it. The myth of profanity exists purely because we believe in it, which, in my opinion, is archaic.

I've never studied the subject, but my brain tells me this likely started ages ago when people were more ridiculously superstitious (I say "more" because people are still superstitious, but we weed certain traditional taboos out over the centuries and tell ourselves we're not) and they feared that saying certain things about god would bring his wrath down upon us. (I know, some people still believe that.)

From there, I suspect we added certain sexually-loaded language to the list, fearing that if we spoke these kinds of words, orgies would break out and society would collapse. I know from personal experience that there are people living in the United States of America in the 21st century who actually fear that if their children hear (or read) about homosexuality, they will become homosexual. These are people with jobs and college educations and drivers licenses.

Personally, I think it is all a lot of hooey. When I was raising my daughters, they were not denied knowledge of profanity, but told that certain words and phrases were off limits only until they were old enough to understand the social implications and use them appropriately. I didn't want my six-year-old using language that other people would use to make inaccurate assumptions about their character.

Not surprisingly, this worked. They weren't forbidden from knowing or uttering these things, they were simply warned of other people's reactions to them if they did and asked to wait until they fully understood this concept before they talked that way. Both are now well-rounded, happy adults. Their brains didn't explode.

I also did this with all matters of sexuality, illegal drugs, manners of dress, etc. If you tell your kids the truth and give them good, factual information on which to make their decisions, they tend to make the right decisions. Imagine that.

I could go on and on about the myth of profanity, but it wouldn't make any difference, so f*ck it.

I hope you like this cartoon, as a person who hates doing laundry, I got a chuckle out of it.

I get a couple of hundred emails every day. Some are personal notes from people I know, some are from readers, some are about business, some are "action alerts" from various groups in which I'm interested, and some are forwarded jokes and supposedly funny pictures.

I don't read all of my emails because I neither have the time nor the interest. I can tell from the subject line and address what most of them are about and I just hit "delete" on all of the stuff I don't care about. That's probably what you do, too. What I don't understand, though, is when people get upset about unsolicited email they get and go out of their way to write to someone and insist they be taken off the list. I find it so much easier and less insulting just to delete them. (I'm not talking about Viagra spam and the like, which doesn't work even if you complain. That's what spam filters are for.)

I recognize that not all computers and email programs are the same. If you're on an old system that takes more than a split second to download mail and requires you to open each email to find out if you want to read it or not, I can see how excess mail would be bothersome. Perhaps wrongly, I assume that almost everyone has a fast system now and that all they are really complaining about is having to flick their finger to delete something they don't want. I'm probably as off base about this, but it just seems like there are better things to get huffy about.

By the way, I do personally read and respond to all of the emails I get from Bizarro readers, except when I don't. Occasionally I get very behind on email – with stuff I've flagged to be read and responded to, not the "instant delete" stuff – and I don't answer emails I mean to. If you've ever written to me asking something that requires a response and you didn't get it, it was an accident, I wasn't just being a poo-donkey. Sorry.

That being said, please don't write just to see if I'll respond. That would make me huffy. If you really want to know something, though, feel free.

Friday, August 28, 2009

I like this cartoon for its simplicity. The absurd lack of geographic proficiency of Americans is embarrassing and reflects our arrogance. It is yet another item on the "Why They Hate Us"list, and who can blame them? Far too many Americans are too self-absorbed and intellectually lazy to find out what is going on outside of our own borders. Or inside, for that matter. That's how the network calling itself "Fox News" gets away with passing off their absurd propaganda as "news."

This morning, the winner, a reader indentifying himself as "t. tex," wrote to me and I was surprised to find out he is a guy I knew way back in my squandered youth in Texas. When I was front man for The Doo, Tex was at the helm of the infamous Dallas punkrock band, The Nervebreakers.

Tex is in Austin now, (good choice) and has a pretty interesting blog about music and other odd things. I got lost there this morning, applying my eye bones to the many peculiar photos and sundry art, to which I will be linking in the future. Always fun to find a new source.

Gotta catch some shut eye now. Conan wanted me on his show tonight to talk about the contest, but I just can't make it all the way out to the West Coast on such short notice.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

We have a winner of the previous post's contest, a Mr. t. tex. I've posted his winning answers, coming in only minutes after I posted the contest, in the comments section of the contest blog. If you don't want to dig, here they are again, in t.'s own words:

Garfield graffiti addedsnake addedscreaming manface photo addedC gone from crashbackwards sbugeyed little spaceman(?) in top right cornermonth misspelledobject under car turned a different directionimage in back windshield addedlicense plate changed from pixie to piraro

Next contest is next week, and this time I'll announce it the day before, telling you exactly what time I'll post the images the next day, so that you can get a jump on the competition if you're so inclined. Thanks to everyone for entering!

The cartoon at top is the one that ran in the papers, the one below has been changed in ten ways. The first person to correctly list all ten differences in the comments section of this post will win an ENTIRE BOX of Bizarro Trading Cards. That's a bunch of cards, over a hundred, a full set, a 50-something dollar value retail.

"How can you afford to be so generous, Dan?" one might well ask.

To which I would reply, "I don't know, I'm just jacking around."

If the contest is fun and works out well, we'll do this from time to time. If it is a huge hassle for me and I start to sweat and weep, this will be the last one. Stay tuned.

Click on the individual images for a larger view. Some differences are easy (duh) some are hard.

Only one winner per contest. Must be alive to win. No purchase necessary. Do not use trading cards while operating heavy machinery. Light machinery is probably fine. Use of alcohol or tranquilizers may intensify effect of trading cards. Must be willing to send me a pic of yourself with your prize to post on the blog. Try to look excited. Winner does not have to agree to publish their name or location. Trading cards may present a choking hazard to people with a huge mouth and a tiny I.Q.

Monday, August 24, 2009

What's funnier than caveman violence? A lot of things, but today's cartoon is about caveman violence anyway.

I guess this joke comes from the recent economic catastrophe, known in some corners as The Bush Legacy, and while there is nothing funny about so many people being out of work, maybe a recently laid off employee might look at this cartoon and say to him or herself, "well, at least I didn't get clubbed or speared." Or perhaps even, "At least I don't have to go around in a one-shoulder dead animal skin and get an uneven tan. At least not yet, anyway."

Keep in mind that during the Great Depression, things were even worse than this and FDR brought us out of it with government spending, which Republicans (who pushed us into that one, too) decried as insanity. Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it and here we are again. But things are beginning to turn around. Let's keep our fingers crossed for a quick recovery. It took 8 years to bury the country this deep, it's going to take more than a few months to dig it out.

P.S. I think I used that photo that is beneath the "Talent Portion" link above before, but it's so great, I decided to use it again.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

This idea came from my good friend, Cliff Harris, who is a wordsmith extraordinaire. He plays with words in unusual ways, writes word puzzles, writes stories in puzzle form, and just generally defies the laws of language in ways that make me wonder if he was dropped on his head as a baby. This cartoon isn't really an example of those skills, but I'm going to publish a Sunday cartoon in the next couple of months that features three examples of one of his odd puzzle motifs. I'll call it "Bizarro Sunday Puzzler," or something like that. It will be fun.

Meanwhile, if you're out in Williamsburg or Greenpoint, Brooklyn today, motorbike and I will be at a vintage motorcycle show called Brand X. Find me and say hello, and I'll give you a free pack of Bizarro Trading Cards!What?!Yes!

Friday, August 21, 2009

Like most modern people in industrialized nations, I wear glasses and take the eyesight they afford me for granted. I didn't need them until I was 38 and my ophthalmologist told me that almost no one makes it past 40 without needing glasses. Apparently, that's just how long human eyes typically last before warping.

Up until relatively recently, however, glasses were not available to most people. So, the vast majority of our ancestors who lived beyond 40, lost their ability to read or do tiny detailed work and walked around in a blurry, ill-defined world. What a fuzzy drag.

I, for instance, occasionally lose the microscopic screw that holds the arm of my glasses to the frame and have to replace it. I can't wear my glasses while doing this, of course, and it is nearly impossible to line up the holes, get the screw in and tighten it without being able to see it clearly. And though I don't need my glasses for driving or getting around the house, I cannot read or draw without them, so if I did not have access to them, my career (and also my favorite pastimes) would be down the toilet.

Part of the story is that most people didn't live much beyond 40 until recently, and, once dead, weren't using their eyes anyway. But those who did live longer were just out of luck. Michelangelo, for instance, lived to be in his 90s and one can track the deterioration of his eyesight through his work. He did this in his twenties, and this in his eighties.

If humans last on this planet, and that's a formidable "if," I wonder what sort of current hardships that we take for granted will amaze our descendants.

Blog of the future: "Up until relatively recently, if people wanted to reproduce, they actually had to squeeze babies out of their bodies. I, for instance, don't have a uterus or vagina, so I would have had to find a woman who was willing to..."

Thursday, August 20, 2009

This is one of those rare cartoons that is wrought from my own experience. When my eldest daughter was a kid, she was vacillating between wanting to be a writer and a musician, and wondered how she would ever be any good at either if her childhood continued to be happy.

A few years later, her mother and I solved that problem by getting divorced. There is nothing I wouldn't do for my children.

Speaking of screwed-up children, how are beauty pageants for children still legal? These things are clearly factories for mental illness and pedophilia. I can't help thinking that one day Americans will look back at pictures of these freak shows with the same disbelief and revulsion that most of us now do when we see an old photo of a public lynching.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

If you haven't seen any of The Onion's news spoofs, you must. Many are brilliant. Here's one that satirizes a public demonstration technique that my own CHNW has been a part of.Afew of the women in the actual PETA protest footage they use are acquaintances or friends of ours.

This gag left a few readers wondering. It's a fairly odd idea and I'm not surprised it did not ring a bell with some folks.

It's a joke about stupid criminals. I saw a car with a canoe strapped to the roof one day and thought that if it was parked by a lake and some idiots decided to steal it but use the canoe to get away down the river instead of the car down the roads, they might flip it over and attempt to float it. Which would not work, of course. Then again, they'd never be able to flip the car over in the first place, so what we probably have here is just a stupid cartoon.

I've been doing cartoons 7 days a week for nearly 25 years and no matter how hard you try, you're just not going to create a refrigerator-worthy classic every day. In all modesty, I still think I've got a better batting average than most of the stuff in the paper, so I'm not going to be too hard on myself.

I you would like to know firsthand what it is like to be me, follow these three simple steps:

1. Come up with a reasonably original idea and scribble it down in cartoon form2. Do that 9,125 days in a row3. Write about it in a blog

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

I just got back from Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary last night and was dead tired. I took a two-hour nap when I got home, then slept another 9 hours last night. Lordy.

I rode my motorbike up there and back (1971 BMW R75/5) and took the back roads instead of the big highway. What is normally a 2 1/2 hour journey took me 4 1/2 hours each way. Fun, but very tiring. Still, what a great time we had.

I'm behind on everything now, so no time to make a whole jazztown-hootenanny-blogspree right now. Got to catch up on a deadline and tons of email.

I like this Crazy Cat Lady cartoon because I know a few of them. It occurred to me that they'd be just as crazy without the cats.

Peace, love, and rainbows my friends...(tune in tomorrow for UNICORNS!)

Saturday, August 15, 2009

I'm spending the weekend at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary with some friends. Such a great time is being had by all. We didn't plan it this way, but this weekend is a big celebration of some anniversary of the famous hippie-fest in the late 60s. Tons of ex-hippies, old hippies, young retro hippie wanna-bes, and average tourists are wandering the streets. We mostly just stay out at the farm, which is not close enough to the town to be affected by the festivities.

Last night they had a dandy fireworks show over the cemetery at the edge of town. For a small town, it was quite elaborate. Half the fun was watching the fireworks, the other half was watching how the fireworks affected everyone's drugs.

Got to get back to farm chores. Chopping wood, sweating, moving said chopped wood to the wood pile, sweating, feeding and cleaning up after animals, sweating again. It is hot today.

When I wrote and drew this gag, I was thinking of the guy calling his wife at home on Earth. But when I formatted it for the web just now, it occurred to me that a person may well think he's just calling back to the module. For that matter, the astronaut could be a woman and "Honey" could be her husband. Or she could be a lesbian and "Honey" is her wife. Or a gay astronaut and "Honey" is his husband. Or an animatron of Richard Nixon from DisneyWorld's Hall of Presidents and "Honey" is James K. Polk.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Monsters who feel remorse for their behavior is a regular theme in vampire dramas – HBO's "True Blood," the film, "Twilight" – so I thought it might be fun to extend the same feelings to a zombie. He eats people's brains, then feels bad about it. If only Karl Rove were capable of such emotion.

A libertarian reader told me recently that he believed government should stay out of our way because most people are basically good and will do the right thing without government intervention. He called my view that humans cannot be trusted, "cynical."

He's absolutely right, it is cynical. I also happen to think it is realistic and accurate, as witnessed by recent human history. (By "recent," I mean the past 100,000 years.) While most "individuals" might be good, groups of idividuals in power cannot be trusted. Corporations are amoral by definition – their sole purpose for existence is to make money, not serve humanity – and the very small percentage of people who rise to the top of corporations are very often as unethical and unrepentant as a zombie. That's how they get there. Bernie Madoff, Ken Lay, Dick Cheney, everyone on Wall Street, etc.

People who rise to the top of government usually have the same problem, of course; power almost always corrupts. But the difference is that government is not amoral by definition and in a republic such as ours, the politicians eventually, in some way, must answer to the rest of us. That is to say that if things get out of hand we can fire them, as we did to so many Republicans in the last election. (Of course, people have to be smart enough to figure out they are being screwed, which sometimes takes a while, but that's another story.)

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

I like these kinds of ideas that require sparse art because I don't have to work on them as long. I like elaborate drawings as much as some of my readers like looking at them, but it is nice to have a simple idea now and then that would not support an elaborate background.

for those of you who miss searching for the hidden symbols, however, I have created the following alternate version.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

I haven't much to say about this cartoon except that I think it's fun. Horses are great. I've never once opened up a GQ, so I know nothing about the magazine other than what its covers look like on a newsstand. Perhaps some of you already knew that by the way I dress and think I should open one more often.

More importantly, my old humanities professor is coming to visit in about an hour and we've been cleaning the house feverishly for the past 24 hours. It's almost done, but not quite. I like having house guests because it is the only thing that makes us clean up, but I hate it because it's hard work and I know that it will be a complete wreck again not 12 hours after he walks out the door.

My professor is a terribly cool old gentlemen, and visits NYC from time to time to see theater. We might go to see "Hair" with him. What a "hoot," as the homosexuals say. (To be fair, many heterosexuals and bisexuals say it, too, although I believe the term was made popular in the gay community.)

Must conclude now, I have to run around the house with a rag and some floor cleaner and buff out the cat puke stains.

Monday, August 10, 2009

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I'd love to start a blog that just comments on the art of other cartoons every day. I don't have time to do it regularly, but here is a perfect example of what I mean.

Shoe's left arm does not match the rest of his body. The line weight is heavier and it is wearing a suit jacket sleeve, while the rest of him is all Casual Friday with a golf shirt, or whatever you call those things. Jim MacNelly, who created this strip and was a very talented artist, writer and editorial cartoonist, is rolling over in his grave. (I don't know why they "roll," I don't invent the activities of the dead, I just report them.) Somebody hires TWO people to take over his strip and neither of them can be bothered to draw an arm to match the body, or at least steal one that is wearing the correct clothing.

I don't know either of the people who work on this strip now, but it sort of makes me wonder if all of the pictures are stolen from old art and pieced back together.

Oops. I just noticed that his hand is coming out from behind a menu. Never mind.

A friend of mine from the old days posted a video of my band from 1981 on Facebook. Steve Dirkx played with The Telefones, a legendary Dallas band from the same period, and used to film other bands with his 8mm hand-held camera, without sound. He then added another recording of one of our songs to this film, which is why the actions don't always match the sound. I'm singing through one of the guitar solos, for instance.

It brings back lots of good memories, thought some of you might enjoy it. I happy to say this is a song I wrote, though most of our songs were written by my best friend and guitarist, Mark Veale. He's the one on the video drinking the beer during the show. Others:Lead guitar: Craig MeansBass: Colin MarshDrums: Myron Blakely

Yes, I know that to those of you over 20, Twitter seems like an obnoxious bourgeois trend, but I'll do my best to make it fun for you. It's just two sentences at a time and maybe a pic. Break down and give it a try if you're at all curious. It's free and doesn't take more than a minute.

Or, do as I have done many times and climb to the roof, shake your fist at the clouds, and curse the gods of technology who keep cramming this crap down our throats.

I'm a big fan of an online feature called "Garfield minus Garfield." For those who are not familiar with it, it is simply the daily Garfield comic strip with Garfield removed. The effect is sublime. A study in loneliness and insanity.

G-G inspired this cartoon, hence the asterisk. In my humble opinion, while not as clever as G minus G, my cartoon about the musings of a field is every bit as exciting as much of what appears on newspaper comics pages.

If I had the time, I'd start a similar daily blog critiquing the "artwork" in comics. There is so much to talk about each day and it would be a blast. But time is something I have only barely enough of to keep this current miserable effort going, so it will have to wait.

Thanks for taking the time to learn to read and visiting this post. Truly, you are heart cockle warming.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

I've harped many times on this blog about reality shows like American Idol and how I can't understand why people watch them. But it has a massive audience, so I guess I'm in the minority.

Last night, I saw a couple of minutes of a poker show. Apparently, people will now watch people play cards on television. This astounds me. Are there people so lazy that they are not willing to move their own wrists and play cards themselves, preferring instead to watch strangers do it? And they're not even dogs.

I understand why these shows appeal to producers; there are no production costs other than the equipment they shoot with. No writers, no actors, no sound effects or even editing to speak of, just a pack of cards and a TV studio. Half of Hollywood's on- and off-screen talent is out of work because of this kind of programming. And the vast majority of them aren't wealthy stars, but just working stiffs like you and me.

Those of you who enjoy this kind of show are perhaps saying that if I really enjoyed playing poker I'd find it fun to watch others do so. Perhaps, but I enjoy lots of things – eating, riding a bike, reading – but I can't see myself watching others do these things on TV. Even when you make a game of it, like those wretched eating contests, I am nonplussed. I'd almost rather be waterboarded than forced to watch gluttonous twits cramming hot dogs down their throats.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Yes, it's another one of those preachy, vegan editorial cartoons. Sorry, but it's a fun angle with a silly picture and it was conceived by my eighteen-year-old protege, Victor, who has been donating the occasional cartoon idea to Bizarro since he was a mere 15.

I had to fix it a little, but basically the idea was his. Although he had an alligator, a worm, and a container of talcum powder instead of farm animals, and the line was not exactly the same. Victor's original line was "What about Churchill?" And the chalkboard was a little different in his version, in that it was a deflated hot air balloon hanging over a clothesline, but basically it was the same gag. I just punched it up a bit.

So little Vic, or "Vickydoo" as I call him, was on vacation in NYC with his family recently and came by the house. We had cocktails on the veranda, then went to dinner and a nightclub, followed by dancing. All while wearing tuxedos and glittery gowns like those old Fred Astaire movies. It was mahvelous.

Enjoy now this photograph of Vickydoo and Yours Truly partaking of scotch and cigars on the couch at Bizarro Headquarters.

While you are at it, gaze upon this adorable depiction of the youngster wearing one of my hats. He was so excited most of the evening, his mouth gaped open like a catfish.

Finally, I offer this charming photo of little V wearing CHNW's motorcycle helmet and mugging for the camera with me and a local homeless man.

If Victor and his family had half as much fun that evening as CHNW and I did, they had twice as much fun as someone who had no fun at all.

Friday, August 7, 2009

I like this gag a lot and assumed it was a harmless little play on words. Not to one reader, apparently. Below is one of my favorite bits of hate mail in a good while.

Your'e obviously a Liberal- it's noticeable in your comics- in the regular little jabs at conservative Americans.Bet this just blows your ass that your favorite Facist, B.O., Nobama; Owebama-whatever you want to call the lying, racist, piece of shit he is -is dropping like a boulder over a cliff in popularity.People are finally waking up- Thank GOD- oh, sorry- you probably don't like that word- too bad.I do like your work- most of the time. So go ahead ,if it makes you feel better-and continue with the pathetic little jabs at Americans-like your piece today, you poor thing.Bless your heart.

Aside from her blatant, Fox News zombified view of current events, my favorite part of this is the condescending "poor thing" and "bless your heart" at the end. I replied with a polite note in response saying, truthfully, that I wasn't sure what she was talking about. What does this cartoon have to do with politics or conservativism? Her response:

Dan- thank you for responding. It is obvious by your cartoon that you feel anyone that carries a gun is an extremist. B.O. said as much during his campaign with his "clinging to guns and religion" remark- in the process offending and insulting a large population.And obviously you are making a joke-albeit a sick one -that Al queda is conservative because they carry guns- no, they hijack planes and murder 3,000 men ,women and children-but "that's another topic".That you support a lying, racist ,spineless, cry-baby Facist that doesn't have the balls to take responsibilty for his own actions- [no one forced him to run for president, did they?]is your business.You, Janine Garafolo and the other liberals just can't understand why almost 50% of this country despise this man- so ,we must be racists? His poll # 's are dismal across the country,and you blame the south? He is deliberately,systematically destroying this country-that's quite enough for us to run this pig out of office. The arrogance and ignorance of your statements are stunning. The racism coming from your "president"-he's not mine- and the elitism from you just reaffirms why the country is turning against you and yours.Let me guess- you LOVE Msnbc, Chris MathewsJon Stewart, Letterman, Daily Kos,etc ,right?Exactly.Keep drinking the kool-aid-we'll talk again in 3 1/2 years. I do like most of your comics-your'e just misguided-bless your heart.

Again, with the heart blessing. So I've been set straight at last. I wish she had written sooner.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

When I was young, I found the stereotypical flute-playing snake charmers of India to be fascinating. I figured that regardless of how good you are at it or how tame the snake is, it has got to be a dangerous job. Unless the snake is defanged, you're spending pretty much your entire day within striking distance of a cobra. It's like being Donald Trump's personal assistant.

Even creepier, though, are the religious hillbilly kooks who handle poisonous snakes because of a single line in the Bible that says something about safely handling serpents. The supposition is that if they have enough faith, God will protect them from the snake. What they don't realize is that modern translations of the Bible are not in all instances accurate. In ancient Hebrew, the word for "serpent" was very similar to the word for "scissors." We now know that the author was recommending safety with scissors, not playing with snakes.

I don't know if these serpent-handling cults still exist, most of the photos of them that you can find are from the early and mid-20th century. There are, however, newer cults that show their faith in god by safely handling scissors at their services.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

This cartoon is sad and depressing. If you don't like black humor, look away before it is too late. Think of ducklings and cotton candy. If that doesn't work, try images of Glenn Beck on a raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

I like this kind of humor. I find that laughing at life's hardships is essential to surviving them. Who among us hasn't been married to the same person for so long that we'd rather die than go on another day? Okay, neither have I, but I can imagine it happening. To someone else, not me, because my love for CHNW is eternal and perfect; full of rainbows and ducklings and cotton candy and Glenn Beck withering to dust on a raft at sea.

But other kinds of bad things will happen to me, and when they do, I hope I can think of something odd and humorous to say about it, like our trooper in the cartoon above.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Not much to say about this cartoon. It's a pun with a fun image. I enjoyed drawing the creepy treats on the side. I came up with a couple more for the strip version, seen below. Click it to big it.

A reader emailed a story to me about an ice cream truck driver abducting a child, the mom saw it happen, jumped in her car and gave chase. A few other moms joined, they caught the guy, rescued the kid and the driver was arrested. Don't know how true, but it's a good story.

You gotta love vigilante moms, as long as they're after serious stuff like pedophiles and drunk drivers, and not just smokers or people with tattoos. I've seen moms push their kid's stroller out into the street to keep their precious offspring away from the nasty man with the cigar (me). Because every good parent knows, a single breath of residual tobacco smoke wafting in the breeze is far more dangerous than traffic.

In summary, I love ice cream trucks but cannot tolerate the music they produce, I love cigars but am annoyed by the bad rap they get because of anti-cigarette propaganda, I love kids but think their parents can be obnoxious.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

I don't have a car, but if I did, it would likely be a hybrid. I don't have a horse, either, but I think a horsepig would be a fun ride. One would certainly get lots of stares and you couldn't ask for a better conversation starter.

I'm one of those people who likes things that are different from the norm, so the horsepig would appeal to me, regardless of its relatively ungraceful appearance. But that would only be until they caught on and everyone had one, then I'd move on to something else. What I'd really dig would be a horsechicken. Think of the pecking power a beast like that would have.